


give me a shot at the night

by musicspeakstoo



Series: boy you was battle born [14]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic, Gen, Growing Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:26:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24853786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicspeakstoo/pseuds/musicspeakstoo
Summary: Tim moves out of the Manor and into a brownstone with Steph as his roommate. This whole being a functional adult thing? Kind of overrated.
Series: boy you was battle born [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/473803
Comments: 4
Kudos: 112





	give me a shot at the night

**Author's Note:**

> Hello hello hello! I know it's been a while, I apologize, the urge to write is fickle. I am absolutely terrible at responding to comments, but I assure you I have read them all and read them again each time I've been feeling down. To those of you who have commented, left kudos, or just plain took a chance on this silly thing, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. 
> 
> On that note, I feel a little bad giving you all what is essentially meaningless fluff when there's supposed to be an actual plot to this thing. Truthfully, I do have some angsty stuff in the works but quite frankly I haven't been in the mood to touch it for several reasons. 
> 
> I hope you are all being safe and wearing masks, washing your hands, etc. I nag because I care. Title is from "Shot At The Night" by The Killers.

Upon the completion of his GED, Bruce’s return, and Jason coaxing him into dropping Red Robin, Tim decided to move out of the Manor. He buys a brownstone and, in a move both considered a stroke of genius, proceeded to enlist Steph as a roommate. There’s something to be said about their lives that everyone had protested Steph moving in with him _not_ because she was his ex-girlfriend.

“I love you both, don’t get me wrong,” Dick had said, “but your relationship was a lot of yelling and keeping secrets and you guys never really hashed that out. What’s it going to be like when you two have to share a space?”

“Are you guys sure this is a good idea?” Babs had asked, in a rare moment of dropping the Oracle voice. “Steph likes to tackle things head-on and you’re allergic to any confrontation that happens outside of vigilantism.”

“Don’t let it interfere with the work” was all Bruce had said, prompting Steph to flip off his retreating back.

“If she kills you, we promise not to replace you with Damian,” Kon swore, likely trying to be supportive.

Their concern wasn’t unwarranted, it’s just that when you’ve been through as much shit together as Tim and Steph had, things have a way of working themselves out. 

It works itself out like this: they spent the first few months moving past each other like two ships in the night exchanging brief greetings and waving from across rooftops if their patrols crossed. This lasted until midterms, at which point they ended up in the living room screaming at each other, digging out old unacknowledged hurts and conflicts long-since resolved until Steph threw her hairbrush at him, which he ducked, and it made a dent in the wall. They looked at each other, then burst out laughing until they were on the floor sobbing. After they calmed down, they went into the kitchen and made waffles, which they ate in silence.

Once they got that first major meltdown out of the way, it was much easier to cohabitate, even hang out. Tim found that he’d really missed Steph, and she seemed to have missed him as well.

The dent in the wall sat there until neither of them noticed it. One day Jason decided to crash with them, and sometime between his arrival and his departure, a poster for the Gotham Public Library was placed over it. As the poster was a free gift for donating, and because Tim and Steph had no objections to it, the poster stayed.

……………………………………………

“Trust me on this one, kiddo,” Dick says as Tim stares at the products on the shelf in front of him, “you really do have to buy the name brand tin foil.”

……………………………………………..

Despite Tim being an engineering major and Steph being a Nutritional Sciences major, and thus being in separate schools within GU, they do end up sharing some classes. These were general requirements courses and they’d realized after their first semester that they were better off taking them together. 

It’s always good to have allies, both in vigilantism and in academia. It was nice to have someone to take notes for you when you were sleeping off a new strain of Scarecrow’s fear gas or remind you to email the assignment to the professor before you left for that night’s stakeout.

Sharing classes with a fellow vigilante also meant that you had someone to watch your back. For example, their professor’s on the warpath this afternoon, probably due to lingering frustration related to yet another fight between the university and the adjuncts about the fact that the adjuncts weren’t being paid enough and the university didn’t want to pay them more. 

He could sympathize, but it made for a tense classroom as it was clear few people had done the reading. Tim had done the reading that morning while scarfing down breakfast, but Steph had a long night down by the docks and was currently snoozing on Tim’s shoulder while wearing a onesie modeled after Babs’s Batgirl costume. She even had matching slippers with the bat logo on them.

Tim nudges her as yet another student fumbled their way through the class discussion. She groaned and he murmured to her, “Raise your hand and say ‘I appreciate the author’s decision to include his criteria for comparison, but I felt he could have expanded upon them more.’”

She whines lowly and with seemingly great effort, heaves herself up and does just that. 

The professor nods. 

“Thank you, Miss Brown, for doing the reading. You’re correct, of course, the author does not fully describe why he chose these two texts to compare. This problematic element…”

As the professor turns to the board, Steph puts her head back on Tim’s shoulder and closes her eyes.

“Nailed it,” she says and Tim stifled a laugh.

…………………………………………..

“I expect all of you to be in the Cave tomorrow for training,” Bruce growls.

Steph raises her hand.

“Yes, of course, except for Batgirl and Blackbird.”

“What?” Dick complains, “why do they get to be exempt?”

“We have a situation to take care of. It’s very important and time-sensitive,” Steph replies haughtily.

“We do?” Tim asks her in an undertone as Dick and Damian start arguing over whether or not seeing friends is just as important as training.

“Have you seen the state of our fridge lately?” she mutters out of the side of her mouth, “there’s an increasingly precarious tower of takeout containers and something going fuzzy in a drawer.”

“I did throw out a depressing avocado the other day,” he muses.

“I think that was a pear, actually.”

They ponder this for a moment and then gag.

……………………………………………………….

Tim’s sitting in his room, trying to find a connection between the shell company that owns all the high-rises that have been mysteriously set on fire in the past three months when Steph sticks her head into his room.

“Study break, bird brain,” she holds up an electric clipper set, “you’re gonna help me shave my head.” 

Tim stares at her for a few moments, then says, “Give me an hour.”

“Done,” Steph nods, walking away as Tim vanished back behind his laptop. 

She comes down to the bathroom on the second floor, the one which is mostly taken up by a monstrous bathtub, an hour later in a ratty t-shirt to find that Tim has laid out all the parts for the clipper, as well as the hair shears, on a stepladder they usually keep in the kitchen. He’s got one laptop open with a bunch of pictures of undercuts balanced on the sink and a tablet paused on a video of someone giving someone else an undercut. She smiles at him fondly, his Battish need to have all the information can be really endearing when applied to normal tasks.

“Are you playing ABBA?” she asks, walking into the room and plopping down in the chair right in front of where Tim’s standing.

Tim shrugs, handing her the laptop with the photos, “It seemed like good music for a drastic haircut. Pick one.”

She looks through them as Tim checks over his supplies, he’s got hair clips you see in salons and a full-length mirror as well as a handheld mirror, though there are only an old, bloodstained towel and an equally bloodstained sheet which he helpfully tucks over her shoulders and around her front. Steph finds the one she wants and hands it over to Tim, who considers it and nods.

She stares into the mirror a few feet in front of her, “Hey, where did you find this cool mirror on wheels?” 

“Kon found it in the attic of the farmhouse,” Tim explains as he starts sectioning her hair, “but no one had any use for it and I figured we could always use more furniture that moves easily.”

“We could indeed,” she replies as he picks up the scissors and starts to cut.

Steph thought she’d feel sad or anxious seeing all her hair come off, but she’s mostly relieved and excited. She’d deliberated about this for weeks, going back and forth as to whether or not she wanted people to see the scars on her head before ultimately saying “fuck it if people stare then that’s their problem.”

It’s partially why she asked Tim who after years of hanging around Jason, Roy, Bart, and Kon has made him more indulgent of people’s impulsive decisions. Besides, between Jason’s tattoos and Tim’s shoulder-length hair, she wouldn’t be the first of them to change her physical appearance to reflect emotional changes. 

Tim’s just about to turn on the clippers when something occurs to her.

“Hey,” she says, “you know I’m fucking your sister, right?”

Tim doesn’t even blink, “Yeah.”

“Okay.”

He flips on the clippers, “I’m gonna start longer and then go shorter, okay?”

“Sounds good.”

“By the way,” Tim says casually, “did _you_ know that Cassie and Mia are hooking up?”

Her eyebrows shoot up and her mouth drops open as she meets his eyes in the mirror, “No way! Since when?”

He manages to shrug without moving his shoulders as he starts to shave, “A few months ago, but they’re not telling people.”

“Soooooo all of the current and former members of Young Justice/Teen Titans know?”

He’s about to reply when they both see a flash of red at the window just before it slides open.

“What’s up, bitches,” Jason shouts, “who wants a pork roll, egg, and cheese?”

“Me,” they manage to say in unison.

Jason climbs through the window yielding a half-full plastic bag with a familiar odor, his helmet dangling from the same hand by two fingers.

“Oh, hey, I see Tim’s salon is open for business,” Jason says, pulling out a sandwich and handing it to Steph.

“Mock all you want, buddy,” Steph says, “but I’m saving so much money right now.”

“I guess that’s true.” Jason pulls another sandwich out before putting the whole bag at Tim’s feet. 

“Hey Baby Bat, since you already have all the shit out, after you’re done with her, can you give me a trim?”

“Sure,” Tim replies as he switches out the blades on the clippers. 

“Does it still infuriate Damian that you call Tim that?” Steph asks, taking advantage of the pause in hair cutting to take a large bite of her sandwich.

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Jason says around his own mouthful.

Tim makes a face at them both that she just manages to catch in the mirror, sticking her tongue out in reply.

“I really don’t care if you start calling him that, it’s not like I’m super attached to it.”

“Fuck no, you were here first it’s your nickname. Genetics doesn’t have shit to do with it.”

“Tim just feels bad because I still call him ‘Boy Wonder’ and enjoys that it pisses Damian off,” Steph interjects.

“I should leave the kid with _something_. But if Dick still gets called variations of that nickname, then so do I. Anyway, it’s not just you, Cassie and the rest of the Teen Titans still call me that.”

“That’s because you never forget your first...Boy Wonder, that is.” Steph grins at Tim in the mirror as he blushes.

Jason rolls his eyes at them as he fishes a second sandwich out of the bag. 

“So, Jason,” Steph asks, shifting back to her and Tim’s original conversation,

“did _you_ know Cass and I are dating?”

Jason frowns at her, “I thought everyone knew that.”

She blows out a frustrated breath, “Well, Dick didn’t and you know how he gets about missing out on personal shit.”

“Hypocritical and pissy?”

She starts to nod but stops herself at Tim’s noise of protest.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“You’re done,” Tim says hurriedly. Even now there’s only so much ragging on Dick he’ll allow them to do.

Tim takes the handheld mirror and holds it up to the back of her head so she can see. She turns her head this way and that, it looks really good, not that she’d expected otherwise. 

Steph really lets herself stare, and yes she sees the scars from Black Mask but she also sees the fading streaks of purple Cass helped her do a couple of months ago. She sees Tim in the reflection, patiently waiting for her reaction and she sees Jason in the background smiling knowingly at her. 

“It’s perfect, thanks, Tim.” Her voice is a little wobbly but she knows no one’s going to comment on it.

“You should have the streaks re-done as well, though I imagine you’ll want to wait for Cass to get back,” he replies.

She considers it, “Well, I’m already gross and there’s some leftover hair dye in the junk closet so you might as well do that too.”

Tim swallows the food in his mouth before shrugging, “What the hell? The Drake Hair Salon could use a busy night. You can go get it while I cut Jason’s hair.”

Tim takes the sheet and towel off of her and gestures to Jason, “Your table is ready, sir.”

She impulsively pulls Tim into a hug, which he quickly returns. Her eyes are prickling and Tim tucks his face into her neck like he’s trying to hide it. They break apart and she decides not to mention he’s now covered in blonde hair. 

Jason sits and Steph watches them for a minute, grinning. Then goes downstairs and opens the junk closet next to the stairs, pushing aside half-finished prototypes and bottles of booze, hunting around for the hair dye. She finds that somehow there’s half a box as well as a whole other box, and then has an idea.

“Hey, Boy Beautician,” she calls as she walks up the stairs, “I just found another box of dye. Wanna match with me?”

Tim’s groan is nearly drowned out by Jason’s cheer. She sets the dye on the counter and picks out another pork roll, egg, and cheese from the bag.

“Fine,” Tim huffs out.

“Damn,” Jason says, eyes flitting from Tim to her, “if it’s that easy for you to talk him into dyeing his hair, I should really get you onboard for talking him into getting a tattoo.”

“Oh fuck yeah, I can absolutely talk him into that,” Steph says.

Tim shakes his head rapidly as Steph starts to laugh and the scolds Jason for moving when he laughs as well. She leans against the counter and takes a bite out of the sandwich, watching as Tim trims the permanent white streak in Jason’s hair and thinks about how everyone she knows wears their scars a little differently.

………………………………………………………

“Hey, so like, what if our junk closet is actually a portal to a pocket dimension?”

Steph considers this, “Infinite space to store shit?”

“Yeah, but,” Tim says shifting his weight onto his elbows, “what if something lives there and we keep hitting it with all the stuff that’s in there?”

“Honestly, dude, if there’s anything in there we’ve probably smothered it when we chucked all those blankets in there or otherwise killed it when we accidentally set off one of your goop pellet trap thingies.”

Tim hums, “That’s true. Oh man, I hope it doesn’t start to smell or anything.”

Steph waves her hand, “Even if it did, we’d never smell it. Especially not after the goop incident.”

“My God,” the sound of an indignant eleven-year-old comes in over the comms, “and you two blithering idiots are supposed to protect people?”

……………………………………………………..

There’s a bust at the docks, one which involves all of them, and it’s nights like this one that reminds Tim of why he wanted to be a vigilante in the first place. Not only do they manage to shut down a weapons smuggling operation but they also get to return a kid to his family relatively unharmed.

Bruce vanishes to talk to Commissioner Gordon and Damian and Dick take off to make sure the kid gets home safely while the rest of them stay behind to finish handcuffing the bad guys. 

He’s poking around on one of the laptops they’ve found, running a program to see if there’s anything useful when Steph groans.

“What’s wrong?” Cass asks.

“I just realized that I don’t have any clean clothes left,” she says.

Tim’s head snaps up, “Oh shit, I don’t think I have any either.”

“Didn’t you do laundry the other day?”

“No, I was going to, and then fucking Ulysses Armstrong had to go and steal some explosives and completely ruin my Saturday.”

“Dude,” Harper said sympathetically.

“I have some clean clothes you guys can borrow, I did a couple of loads when I got back from the last Outsiders mission the other day,” Jason offers.

“If you do that, they’ll never learn,” Kate mock-scolds.

“Oh, we’re not going to learn anyway,” Tim says. “I’ve been doing this since I was thirteen and yet I still forget to do laundry.”

“Yeah, but you had someone to do your laundry for you,” Harper points out.

“I didn’t and I’ve been a vigilante for nearly as long as Tim,” Steph counters. 

“And you two are roommates?” Kate asks.

Harper sighs, “Yeah we tried to talk ‘em out of it, but weren’t successful.” 

“Hey!” Steph exclaims.

“They’re not always bad,” Cass says.

“Thank you, Cass,” Tim replies.

“Just mostly,” she finishes, taking off as she does so.

Tim and Steph sputter indignantly at her retreating figure while everyone else laughs.

………………………………………………...

The doorbell rings and Steph bounds down the stairs, happy to have an excuse to stop staring at the blank word document where her essay should be, “I’ve got it.”

Tim starts to get up from the couch, “I can buy it, you bought it last time.”

Steph waves him off as she pulls out some bills, “Nah, my mom gave me some money when I saw her for lunch yesterday. I think she’s willing to let B pay for the big stuff but still wants to be able to take care of the day-to-day.”

Tim shrugs and looks down his pile of papers, half of which are notes on the case he’s currently working and the other half is a study guide for one of his classes.

She opens the door and takes the food happily, trading it for the money she has in her other hand. Tim comes up behind her and takes a bag in each hand, smiling at the delivery man.

“I snuck in something special for dessert for you guys,” he says.

“Awww, George, you didn’t have to do that,” Steph replies.

“Sure I did, you and Tim are both loyal customers and great tippers.”

“Well, we sure appreciate it,” Tim says.

“Sure thing. Good luck on your finals!”

“Thank you,” they say. “Say hi to your wife for us,” Steph adds.

“Will do,” George replies and then leaves with a wave over his shoulder.

“Is it weird our delivery guys know that we’re in the middle of finals?” Steph asks as she shuts the door.

“Well, we did order enough food for four people at nine o’clock at night,” Tim counters.

“They know your names,” says a new voice, and they both look up to see Cass standing at the top of the stairs. 

“What is that like some sort of Bat security breach?” Steph scoffs.

Tim shrugs, “Probably.” 

To Cass, he says, “That’s less of a potential danger and more of a comment on how often we order takeout.”

Cass thinks about this for a few moments, then nods. Tim’s not reckless and Steph’s not careless, if they think it’s okay then it probably is.

“Now, Miss Cain,” Steph says, “Are you gonna help us eat all this, or do we have to tragically eat it all in fits of stress and then later make ourselves sick?”

“Take pity on us,” Tim pleads, “we’re just two twenty-something vigilantes trying to stave off a school-related meltdown with lots of delicious food.”

Steph can see her trying not to laugh and she cheers when Cass descends the stairs. Tim goes into the kitchen to get some napkins and paper plates. Steph leans into the kiss Cass gives her and feels her stress take a backseat.

Tim watches them from the kitchen and smiles. There was a point not too long ago that he never thought he would live to get to this stage in life. And while not everything is fixed, he’s got friends on his side to help him or smack some sense into him. Adulthood is a lot more complicated than he’d thought, there’s a lot of little stuff that has to be done otherwise it turns into big stuff. 

Tim walks into the living room just as Steph is coming in to see what’s taking him so long. It takes both of their training, and some quick reflexes of Cass’s, to stop all the stuff in his hands from falling to the floor.

If Tim is a disaster, at least he’s in good company.


End file.
